A Death in the Family (not the storyline)

We always call ourselves "The Lanterncast Family", well in the spirit of that I want to share something that happened to me this week.

On Sunday, my mom called me to tell me to come to the hospital, she said that my grandma started vomiting and wouldn't stop and had to be taken to the ER. I thought it was nothing serious so I took my time, about two hours in fact. When I got there, I found out that my mom was really just trying to not worry me and this really was a serious situation. What had actually happened was that the vomit had gone into my grandma's lungs, which cut off her air supply and she slipped into a coma. She didn't get any air for 14 minutes, my aunt was there administering CPR but still, no air was flowing through her lungs.

This entire week I've been treating it like it's no big deal, she'll wake up (although with diminished mental capacity) and the world will just keep going on. I feel like an asshole because of what ended up happening and I wasn't affected as emotionally as I feel I should have been.

She was officially pronounced brain dead this morning but my family waited to pull the plug until we could all gather to be there when she slipped away. I was there when it happened and saw the color drain from her. Her official TOD is 10:55 pm 5/2/13 PDT which is just over an hour ago as I write this. I didn't really get to know her that well as a person because she's been on so many sedatives my entire life that she was basically a shell of a person for as long as I can remember but I still loved her more than I can express.

I just wanted to share that with everyone because you all mean a lot to me.

GLKitteh wrote:I'm very sorry for your loss. I'm sorry I can't offer more support for you but know that if you need to talk I always have an open ear.

cage_narleigh wrote:I'm sorry for your loss man. I lost my great-grandmother fairly recently. It's a hard thing to go through, much less see first-hand.

gland wrote:If there's anything we can do, tell us.

Thanks John, Chad, and Dan. Just being able to get my feelings out is plenty of help. I've been told that I'll probably be dealing with this for some time to come so the best thing I can do is keep living life. I wasn't hit as hard as other members of my family because I've been mentally preparing myself for this since she had a mini-stroke three years ago. Just keep doing what you're doing, knowing life goes on helps, diving headfirst back into life is keeping me from having an outburst at an embarrassing moment and letting me just go into my room to cry it out. I'll get over this eventually but I know I should try to take it one day at a time.

To anyone who only read this, thank you for listening, seeing the views count go up helps in its own way.

That sucks Daoud. I lost my awesome grandma 2 decades ago and still miss her. Then there's my other grandma, the selfish one who would always put herself before her kids. She's still alive. Couldn't give 2 craps about meeting her grandchild, since that would mean her dog would have to suffer a car ride up from Florida. Hell, she couldn't even be bothered to congratulate me or call after I sent pictures. She's a shell of a human and doesn't have sedatives to blame it on.

If It's hard to lose a loved one, it just emphasizes how much love they brought when they were alive.